


'^'^'^^I'^j^*^^^^ T-\ 



V 




Glass lkll>n 
Rnnk ,G-wMl 






'{jSAl^ fi 




Charles Bradford Goff 



1 834-1 898 



Privately Printed 



THE office of a teacher is an office of great 
responsibility and is entitled to high honor. 
When a young man of unusual talents and ac- 
quirements turns away from the more lucrative pro- 
fessions and from the allurements of a business 
life, and deliberately selects the office of a teacher 
of youth, he should be commended and honored 
for his choice. It is true that he assumes grave 
responsibilities, but he is also putting himself in 
a position to do important work for the elevation 
of the race. Every one knows that a well-quali- 
fied and thoroughly earnest teacher exerts a tre- 
mendous influence in moulding the lives of his 
pupils. This is particularly true when his work 
is to fit young men for the college and the uni- 
versity. But when such a man is privileged to 
continue his labors during the period of a whole 
generation, and to receive under his instruction 
many children whose parents had been prepared 
by him for the university, he is specially favored. 



pii Slnceetrp 

Charles Bradford Goff came of good stock. He 
was of the sixth generation in this counti-y. His 
ancestors for two centuries were of the honest, 
earnest, New England yeomanry. Robert Goff, 
his first ancestor in America, came from old Eng- 
land nearly two hundred years ago. The exact 
time of his migration is not known, neither have 
we been able to ascertain from what part of 
England he came. He settled in Dighton, Mass., 
and there, in the year 1740, his son Enoch was 
born. Enoch was well known throughout that 
region as a devout man and an earnest preacher. 
He married, in 1760, Deborah Talbot, and their 
married life extended over a full half-century. 
He lived to the good old age of threescore and 
ten, and died in Dighton, March 6, 18 10. There 
were many sincere mourners at the death of Elder 
Enoch Goff. His wife died six years later, being 
seventy-six years old. 

His son, Shubael Goff, was born in Dighton 
in 1 76 1. He married Sibyl Phillips. He died in 
Dighton Aug. 17, 1833, at the age of seventy-two 
years. His wife, Sibyl, died at the same place in 
1824, being a little over sixty years of age. 



His son, Shubael Goff, Jr., for many years 
known as Captain Shubael Goff, was born also in 
Dighton, March 4, 1 783. He married Sally Briggs 
Goff, who was born in Rehoboth in 1787. She 
belonged to another branch of the Goff family. 
He died Oct. 14, 1854, and his wife died Nov. 4, 
1855, in Rehoboth. By this record it will be seen 
that Captain Goff, like his father and grand- 
father, lived past the allotted age of seventy years. 
He lived on the " Ministerial Place," and had 
fifteen children, thirteen of whom lived to ma- 
turity. 

Captain Shubael had a son, also named Shu- 
bael, who was born in Rehoboth in the year 
1807. He married Elizabeth Mason Ripley in 
1833. He lived in his native town until about 
1836, when he moved to Fall River. This Shu- 
bael Goff, the third generation bearing the same 
name, was the father of the subject of this 
sketch. 

It was on the fourth day of March, 1834, that 
Charles Bradford Goff was born, in the ancient 
town of Rehoboth, Mass. He graduated from 
Brown University at the age of twenty-two, and 
a year later, Aug. 26, 1857, in the city of Provi- 
dence, R. I., he was married to Almira J. Bean. 

3 



The marriage ceremony was performed by the 
Rev. Barnas Sears, D.D., President of Brown 
University. Five children were born to them, 
one of whom died in infancy, another in early 
childhood, and a third, William Francis, a prom- 
ising boy, when he was thirteen years of age. 
Two children and their mother survive, Robert 
Remington Goff, a teacher in the same school of 
which his father was principal for so many years, 
and Mrs. Jennie Martin, wife of Mr. Frederick 
R. Martin, of Providence. 

Mr. Goff's boyhood, like many another New 
England boy who has succeeded in reaching a 
high plane of usefulness and success in life, was 
one continued struggle to acquire the means of 
an education. He was subject to constant hard- 
ships, and each year, even to the time of his 
graduation from college, was marked by that 
heroic devotion to a great purpose which no ob- 
stacles could thwart, and that determined will 
which no discouragement could baffle. He at- 
tended the public schools of Fall River till he 
was about fourteen years of age. At that time 
he went to Middleboro and entered the Pierce 



Academy. He remained there about a year and 
a half. After this he taught school one winter in 
the town of Westport, and then connected him- 
self with the well-known University Grammar 
School, in Providence, which was merged with 
his school the year before he died. This school 
was then taught by Messrs. Lyon and Frieze, 
two very superior classical teachers. Here, for 
a year and a half, Mr. Goff studied eleven hours 
a day. Here he was prepared for college, and 
entered Brown University in 1852. He took high 
rank at once in his class, both as a scholar and 
socially. During his college course he supported 
himself by selling goods in one of the large retail 
stores of the city, on Saturday evenings, during 
the holiday season, and at other times, and by 
private tutoring. He graduated at the head of 
his class and delivered the valedictory at com- 
mencement. He was elected a member of the 
Phi Beta Kappa Fraternity, and his Alma Mater 
subsequently conferred upon him the degree of 
Doctor of Philosophy. For a term of years be- 
fore his death he was an active and honored 
member of the corporation of the college. 



JFall Eibet |)iffl) ^cl)ool 

Immediately after completing his college 
course, he was engaged as principal of the Pre- 
paratory Department of Union College, Schenec- 
tady, N. Y. He remained in this position but a 
single year, when he returned to his Alma Mater 
and spent another year in graduate study. In 
1858 he was elected principal of the Fall River 
High School, a position which he filled to the 
great satisfaction of the people of that city for 
six years. He was instrumental in reorganizing 
the entire school and putting it on a much more 
efficient basis. He graduated six classes of fine 
scholars and sent many of them to college, well 
prepared for a successful course. Some of them 
have since risen to distinction in the professions 
and in business life. His work in this school 
was highly appreciated, and the people expressed 
great regret when he left that city. 

(3nt6 to {}robitience 

Mr. Goff came to Providence when he was 
thirty years of age, and here began what proved 
to be the great work of his life. As principal of 
the Classical Department in the " English and 

6 



Classical School," he devoted himself for the 
long period of almost thirty-five years to the 
preparation of young men for college. That was 
just the same length of time that Dr. Samuel H. 
Taylor presided over Phillips Academy, Andover. 
Dr. Wayland was president of Brown University 
but twentv-eight years. The work of Mark Hop- 
kins at Williams College covered a period of 
thirty-six years. The thirty-four classes which 
graduated during Mr. Goff's administration in 
this school numbered about five hundred young 
men. Connected with the school during this 
period there must have been more than two 
thousand pupils. 

The circumstances of his coming to Providence 
are not devoid of interest. During the last two 
years of his college course a strong friendship 
had grown up between him and Mr. William A. 
Mowry. They were both members of the Brown 
Chapter of the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity, of 
which during the last year of his college course 
Mr. Goff was president. For five years preced- 
ing February, 1864, Mr. Mowry had been princi- 
pal of the English Department in the Providence 
High School. Mr. John J. Ladd was at the same 
time principal of the Classical Department. 

7 



These two teachers resigned their positions in 
the pubhc school, and on the twenty-second of 
February, 1864, opened a private school for boys. 
About the first of July following Mr. Ladd re- 
ceived an appointment as paymaster in the army. 
Mr. Mowry, having bought his interest in the 
school, went immediately to Fall River and 
offered the position to his friend Mr. Goff, as the 
only man to be thought of in that connection. 
Mr. Goff said that he would like to think the 
matter over, and suggested that he would go to 
Providence the next Saturday and give an answer 
to the proposition. Meanwhile, some of the lead- 
ing men of the city, learning of this new plan, 
conferred with him in regard to it. They were 
anxious that he should remain in Fall River, and 
offered to guarantee him a greatly increased 
salary if he would remain. Mr. Goff told them 
that he had engaged to see Mr. Mowry on Satur- 
day, and he must keep his promise. He thanked 
them for their confidence in him, and told them 
that he would give their proposition careful atten- 
tion, but he could not decide until he had seen 
Mr. Mowry. 

Mr. Goff went to Providence on Saturday and 
completed the arrangements by which he became 

8 



partner in the new school on equal terms with 
the founder, and entered upon his duties the first 
of September. 

Now these two young men took a bold step. 
Of course they could not tell how much might be 
lost by the withdrawal of Mr. Ladd. It was also 
a problem as to how well known Mr. Goff was, 
and how much favor he might bring to the 
school. Up to this time there had been but two 
regular teachers. They now determined to add a 
third, and secured for that purpose the services 
of Mr. James W. Colwell, a recent graduate of 
Brown University. They also raised the price of 
tuition. The largest number of scholars hitherto 
had been sixty-five. They opened the school in 
the fall with eighty-five pupils, and were obliged 
to secure an additional room to accommodate the 
increased number. From this time onward the 
school proved a great success and its numbers 
constantly increased. Six months later they 
moved into the new Narragansett block and en- 
gaged the services of an additional teacher, Mr. 
Howard M. Rice, then principal of the High 
School in Woonsocket, now Mr. Goff's successor 



and the sole principal and proprietor of the 
school. They soon afterwards added to their 
corps of instructors Mr. Oscar Lapham, who for 
many years past has been a distinguished mem- 
ber of the bar at Providence and has served 
his State for several terms as a representative in 
Congress. The next year, Mr. Laban E. Warren, 
now professor in Colby College, Maine, was 
called to the school from the principalship of the 
High School at Taunton, Mass. The school con- 
tinued increasing in the number of scholars and 
teachers. It remained in the Narragansett block 
five years and then found more commodious 
quarters in the new Fletcher building, now occu- 
pied by the P?'ovidence Journal. This building is 
two hundred feet long and thirty feet wide. The 
school occupied the whole of one floor and one- 
half of two other floors. It remained in this 
place for six years and was constantly increasing 
in numbers and importance. 

d)e Beto ^ttilUinff 

By this time it seemed clear that the school 
needed and deserved a home of its own. Early 
in 1874 Mowry and Goff purchased an eligible 
lot with buildings thereon, on Snow and Moulton 

10 



Streets. The buildings were removed and they 
proceeded to erect a large brick building some- 
thing over ninety feet square, of three stories, 
planned and finished with special reference to 
the needs of the school. The first floor was for 
twenty years occupied by the Providence Public 
Library, while the school was amply accommo- 
dated on the second and third floors. The build- 
ing was admirably lighted, heated, and ventilated. 
The organization of the school was decidedly 
improved, and courses of study were mapped 
out on the most approved pedagogical principles. 
The entire course covered a period of ten years. 
The Preparatory Department, so-called, embraced 
three years, the Junior Department three years, 
and the Senior Department four years. Pupils 
were received into the preparatory room at eight 
years of age. The Grammar Department was 
arranged in two divisions, one termed Junior 
English, the other Junior Classical. The Senior 
Department in like manner had two divisions, 
the English and Scientific course and the Classi- 
cal course. 



II 



Courcefi of ;§)tttl[j) 

In the Classical course the study of Latin was 
begun by pupils at about ten or eleven years of 
age and continued for seven years before being 
fitted for college. The Greek was studied for 
four years. The English grammar was pursued 
together with the Latin grammar. The boys 
would study the Latin nouns and then English 
nouns ; Latin verbs and then English verbs ; and 
so on through the etymology and syntax of both 
Latin and English. The course in the reading 
of Latin authors included Nepos, Caesar, Sallust, 
Ovid, Cicero (eight Orations and Senectute), and 
Vergil's Eclogues, and the ^neid. The Greek 
authors read were Xenophon, Herodotus, and 
Homer. In the English Department much atten- 
tion was paid to the philosophical order and se- 
quence of studies. A careful foundation was laid 
in the study of arithmetic, geography, elementary 
science, grammar and composition, writing, spell- 
ing, and reading. Under this latter head great 
attention was paid to the reading of standard 
literature from the best English authors. The 
English High School course was planned to em- 
brace several lines of work philosophically ar- 



12 



ranged on a pedagogical basis, with particular 
reference to a consistent, all-round, mental de- 
velopment. First came the three grand divisions 
of learning; viz., (i) the Mathematics, (2) the 
Sciences, (3) Language and Literature. In 
addition to these three separate lines of study- 
carried on simultaneously, the practical studies of 
Commercial Arithmetic, Book-keeping, and Civil 
Government were added, and History and Psy- 
chology, or as it was called in those days, Intel- 
lectual Philosophy or Mental Science. Still 
further, the principals of this school determined 
that it was not essential to pursue with equal 
thoroughness all the Hues of the natural sciences. 
They thought that Physics and Chemistry should 
be studied carefully and thoroughly, on the lab- 
oratory plan. A briefer course was given in 
Astronomy, and — largely by informal lectures — 
a round of studies participated in by three classes, 
taking one year Geology and Mineralogy, the 
next year Botany, and the third year Physiology 
and Zoology. 



13 



titms 

In this new home the school remained for 
twenty-five years. In 1884 Mr. Mowry severed 
his connection with the school, and it then went 
into the hands of Goff, Rice, and Smith. Mr. Gofif, 
from this time until his death, Dec. i, 1898, was 
the Senior Principal of the institution. During 
the whole history of the school, its success and 
popularity were largely dependent upon the fact 
that the managers kept ahead of public-school 
methods and courses. Many examples illustra- 
ting this fagt could be named. When the school 
went into its new quarters in 1875 and revised 
its courses of study, it built into the new school- 
house a complete arrangement for laboratory 
work in the sciences. No elementary text-book 
upon the laboratory plan of teaching chemistry 
was at that time to be found. The principals, 
therefore, called upon Prof. John H. Appleton, 
of Brown University, and urged him to make for 
them a text-book of this sort. He consented, and 
wrote for their especial use an elementary text- 
book based upon the laboratory method of teach- 
ing, which he called " The Young Chemist." 



14 



The proprietors of the school had this book 
printed at their own expense and for their own 
use. Soon after, the Rhode Island Normal School 
and another private school in the city adopted it 
and bought copies of this edition from the pro- 
prietors of this school. Afterward, Professor 
Appleton enlarged the book somewhat, added 
illustrative cuts and diagrams, and a second 
edition was published by one of the leading book- 
houses. To-day there are many excellent text- 
books on chemistry based upon this plan of 
teaching. 

^ttppUmentarp EeaJiuff 

In 1880 three papers were read before the 
Rhode Island Institute of Instruction, looking to 
advanced lines of work upon reading and the study 
of English literature in the schools. One of these 
was a paper by Mr. Amos M. Leonard, master of 
the Lawrence School, Boston, upon " Supplemen- 
tary Reading in the Primary and Grammar 
Schools." Mr. Leonard recommended reading 
English authors instead of the hitherto custom of 
short extracts from the reading-books. Mr. Mowry 
was appointed to open the discussion upon this 
paper, and in his address he named several series 

IS 



of books from the best authors, which had been 
read in a certain school of his acquaintance in 
the several grades indicated during the last three 
years. In one of these years the following books 
were read : — 

In the Junior English Room — Six selections 
from Irving's Sketch Book, The Seven American 
Classics, A Virtuoso's Collection, by Hawthorne, 
Oliver Cromwell, by Carlyle, Dickens's Christmas 
Carol, Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair. 

In the Junior Classical Room — Irving's Six 
Selections from the Sketch Book, Scott's Lady 
of the Lake, Dickens's Christmas Carol, Haw- 
thorne's Wonder-Book. 

In the English and Scientific Room — Hia- 
watha, Seaside and Fireside, Spanish Student, 
Evangeline, Tales of a Wayside Inn, and Hype- 
rion, all by Longfellow, and Hamlet and Mac- 
beth, by Shakespeare. 

In the Senior Classical Room — Longfellow's 
poems Seaside and Fireside, Hiawatha, Tales of 
a Wayside Inn, and others, Scottish History, 
Songs of the Scotch Cavaliers, by Aytoon, Ma- 
caulay's Lays of Ancient Rome, Greek and 
Roman Mythology, Thackeray's Henry Esmond, 
Scott's Marmion, Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient 
i6 



Mariner, Life of Addison and his DeCoverly 
Papers. 

It should be observed that not all of these 
books were read by the same pupils. There were 
four classes in each of the Senior rooms and two 
classes in each of the Junior rooms. In the 
Senior rooms essays upon what had been read 
were from time to time required. This method 
was characterized as " reading for information 
and culture and an introduction to English litera- 
ture." It was added that as the pupils in this 
way while at school became acquainted with the 
writings of good authors, they would most likely 
have a desire to extend this acquaintance by 
reading other books by the same authors later in 
life. 

It has already been stated that a seven years' 
course in Latin was commenced twenty-five years 
ago. Within two or three years past the public 
high schools of Providence have begun, at least 
in one or two schools, to extend the Latin course 
from four to six years. 

Incidentally, it might be remarked that when 
this new schoolhouse was built, twenty-five years 
ago, very few, if any, blackboards in the public 
schools in the city were placed low enough on 

17 



the walls to be properly accessible to the pupils. 
The blackboards in this new schoolhouse were 
placed at a proper height from the floor. To-day, 
it would be difficult to find, in any of the newer 
schoolhouses of the city, blackboards not placed 
as they should be. 

When the city was building the new High School 
edifice on Summer Street, the principal of the 
school asked permission from Mowry and Goff to 
examine their chemical and physical laboratories 
and take measurements and notes of the same to 
be used in equipping the new High School lab- 
oratories. Permission was cheerfully given and 
the measurements and notes were taken, for it 
was the wish of Mr. Goff , as well as his associate, 
to aid the public schools and the cause of general 
education in every possible way. For many years 
prior to his death Mr. Goff was an active and 
efficient member of the Barnard Club, and a co- 
worker in the Rhode Island Institute of Instruc- 
tion, the oldest State Teachers' Association in 
the country. 

Dr. Arnold expressed what he wished to find 
in his older boys, or the boys of the " Sixth 
i8 



form," as follows: "And what I have often said 
before I repeat now : What we must look for 
here is, first, religious and moral principles ; sec- 
ondly, gentlemanly conduct ; thirdly, intellectual 
ability." And at the end of one of his farewell 
addresses, he said : " When I have confidence in 
the Sixth, there is no post in England which I 
would exchange for this ; but if they do not sup- 
port me I must go." These two statements of 
Dr. Arnold, especially the first, apply to the 
teaching of Dr. Goff. By precept and example 
he insisted, first of all, upon moral and religious 
principles. In all his teaching and in all his ex- 
ample he emphasized the Christian gentleman. 
Next to these two great qualities he placed intel- 
lectual ability. He was never sensational. Froth 
and gush were foreign to his nature. Thorough- 
ness, earnestness, steadfastness, he strove to cul- 
tivate. Great purposes, a high, laudable ambition, 
concentration of mind, indomitable perseverance, 
— these were among the things which he held in 
high esteem. He believed in a classical educa- 
tion. He insisted that there could be no substitute 
for a knowledge of the Latin and Greek tongues. 
The logic and the philosophy found in the gram- 
mar of these two languages were believed by him 

19 



to be largely educative and disciplinary in their 
effect upon the minds of the young people who 
mastered them. He fully believed that the great 
thoughts, beautiful expressions, the elegant 
poetry, the courtly imagery, of the poets who 
wrote in these ancient languages were refining 
and elevating to the human soul. He sincerely 
deprecated the modern short cuts in education 
which would leave out the study of these two 
great languages and their literatures. He agreed 
with Dr. William T. Harris, who, in an address 
before Mr. Goff's pupils, said, "Given a new 
town on our Western frontier with just one hun- 
dred men, fifty of whom had studied Latin and 
fifty who had not, the first fifty after a time would 
come to the top and be the leading men in that 
community." Mr. Goff would heartily agree with 
an eminent classical teacher who at one of the 
large New England educational gatherings used 
this simile : " If I had a field of grass to cut, I 
think it would be wise for me to spend a half-hour 
of the morning at the grindstone." 

There was nothing light, flippant, or superfi- 
cial in his character, teaching, or intercourse 
with his pupils. He was far, however, from being 
always serious or sedate, and he was never mo- 
20 



rose. He had a keen sense of humor and fre- 
quently indulged in dry jokes that were often 
afterward called to mind by the students. He 
was always reaching forward to the strongest and 
the highest life-work of his students, but he never 
neglected their present feelings, views, and 
conditions. 

Dr. Arnold laid great stress upon his Sixth 
Form boys. Dr. Goff always had easily the 
confidence, approval, and support of his Senior 
Class, and indeed of all his scholars. His teach- 
ing was always thorough and correct, and his 
discipline easy and efficient. The writer must 
also be permitted to add that in a daily inter- 
course of twenty years, while we frequently dif- 
fered in judgment, we always, after the requisite 
discussion, came to a full and amicable agree- 
ment ; and never in the whole period did a single 
sharp or angry word pass between us. 

Eefiit jFoUotod tl)e ^ttcp ^ap 

Dr. Goff was in good health until a short time 
before his death. He was attacked by pneumonia, 
and appeared to be doing well, apparently throw- 
ing off the disease, until the night of November 
30, when he was suddenly taken worse and died 

21 



a little after midnight. The physicians pro- 
nounced it heart failure. The simple service at 
the funeral was attended by many sorrowing 
hearts, including a large number of the leading 
men of the city, who had been his pupils in the 
years gone by. The Providence Journal said of 
him : " The city loses a most popular educator 
and citizen." His end was peaceful. His work 
was done. Although he had not reached the full 
age of man, yet a full life's work had been fin- 
ished, a life's work of great value, and rest should 
follow the busy day. 

" Leaves have their time to fall, 
And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath, 

And stars to set; but all, 
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death." 

For thirty years Daniel Webster stood at the 
head of the bar and of the Senate, the first law- 
yer and the first statesman of the United States, 
yet in the last year of his life he said to Professor 
Silliman : " I have given my life to law and poli- 
tics. Law is uncertain, and politics are utterly 
vain." 

Dr. Goff turned away from law and politics, 
and for more than forty years his life was one of 
arduous labor in instructing young men. He had 

22 



his reward. His life-work was one unbroken 
success. His pupils, whom he had helped to 
battle successfully in the conflict of life, rise up 
by the hundreds in grateful recognition, and 
bless his name. 

W. A. M. 



23 



^tt^itt^ at tl^e J^cl^ool 

SERVICES in memory of Charles Bradford 
Goff were held in the chapel of the English 
and Classical School, 48 Snow Street, on Friday, 
Jan. 13, 1899. A full report of the exercises 
was printed in a brochure by Dr. Goff 's associate 
and successor in the school, Mr. Howard M. 
Rice, who has kindly given permission that it be 
reprinted. The service began with the reading 
of the Scriptures by Rev. James W. Colwell, a 
former teacher in the school, and prayer by Rev. 
Edward L. Thomas, of the class of 1884. 

fHv. |)otoarti JH, Eite 

Mr. Howard M. Rice then spoke in substance 
as follows : — 

We have assembled here to-day to pay our sad 
tribute of love and esteem to one who stood to 
us in the varied relations of pupil, teacher, asso- 
ciate, and friend. Little did we realize, little did 
he think, perhaps, as he dismissed his class and 
24 



I 



passed out of these doors a few short weeks ago, 
that we should never see him here again. That 
bright eye, that alert step, that cheerful greeting, 
have indeed forever gone, or remain to us only 
as a memory of the past. 

Amid the throng of recollections that crowd 
into one's mind at such a time as this, my own 
memory reverts most frequently to those days 
more than thirty years ago when I first became 
a teacher in this school. Mr. Goff's studies and 
mine were at the time closely allied, and we 
spent many delightful evenings together reading 
for our own pleasure and improvement our 
favorite classical authors. He was then in the 
full vigor of active manhood, enthusiastic in his 
profession and overflowing with life and playful 
humor. The loss of his oldest son in later years 
threw a shadow over his life from which he never 
wholly emerged ; yet there are some of his pupils 
here to-day who will recall the sportive way in 
which he would now and again turn from the 
more serious work of recitation to comment in an 
amusing way on some lighter topic suggested by 
the day's lesson. 

Sad indeed would it be if, to such a life, this 
earth were the end of all, but 

25 



" Immortal is our friend, we know; 
Not summer turf, nor winter's snow. 
Nor depth of earth, could bring to nought 
So much of life, and love, and thought;" 

and cheered and comforted by the assurances 
of that Christian faith in which he was so sin- 
cere and earnest a believer, we feel sure that he 
has passed on into a life of still more active ser- 
vice in the world beyond the grave. 

aiumnt Refioltttioufi 

At a meeting of the Alumni Association held 
just before the memorial service, the following 
resolutions were passed, and were now read 
by Rathbone Gardner, Esq., of the class of 

1873 — 

The Alumni Association of the English and 

Classical School, realizing their great loss in the 
death of their late principal, Charles B. Goff, 
Ph.D., hereby give expression to their apprecia- 
tion of his character and work. He was a 
strong, modest, self-reliant, self-respecting man, 
a man of real learning, possessed not only with 
the knowledge derived from books, but so thor- 
oughly imbued with all that had come to him 
from study and experience as to make really 

26 



new and peculiarly his own the learning which 
he knew so well how to impart to others ; a man 
who taught and imparted by example even more 
than by precept ; whose whole demeanor im- 
pressed upon his pupils the beauty and dignity 
of true culture ; a man who asserted no superior- 
ity, but to whom unquestioned pre-eminence in his 
profession was uniformly accorded ; a man who 
with no effort save the constant exercise of the 
courtesy which was his by nature, won not only 
the respect but the love of all who knew him. 

He lived a life of such usefulness as is ac- 
corded to few men. For more than forty years 
he remained at the post of duty which he had 
chosen for himself, quietly, modestly, doing a 
work the value of which to this community can- 
not be overestimated. 

Hundreds of men to-day owe to him a debt 
of gratitude which they hesitate even to try to 
express in words. They feel that to him more 
perhaps than to any one else they owe all that is 
best, not only of what they have attained, but of 
what they are. 

Year after year he has sent out from this 
school men who have carried what he gave them 
into every sphere and calling of life, and for 

27 



whatever of good each and every one of these 
men has accompUshed he is entitled to a share 
of praise. No man could be named to-day to 
whom this city and State are more deeply in- 
debted than to Charles B. Goff. Now, perhaps, 
we realize this and wish we could give him our 
assurance of it. Few have appreciated him at 
his full value. It is not too late, however, now 
to acknowledge our debt to this strong, noble, 
and simple man. 

After the singing of Tennyson's " Crossing 
the Bar," by the Quartette of the First Congre- 
gational (Unitarian) Church, William A. Mowry, 
Ph.D., of Hyde Park, Mass., one of the founders 
of the school, spoke as follows : — 

Professor Agassiz, the great naturalist, chose 
for his epitaph the simple inscription, " Louis 
Agassiz, Teacher." He was one of the world's 
most distinguished men in the realm of scientific 
research and knowledge, yet he took no motto 
from his favorite studies, nothing to indicate 
his special line of scientific thought, but with 
consummate wisdom emphasized his calling as 
that of an instructor. In this he not only dis- 
28 



played his breadth of mind,, but his high and 
proper appreciation of his chosen profession, — 
the teacher of youth. 

Surely this is the highest, the noblest, the most 
blessed calling within the reach of mortal man. 
Christ himself was the great teacher of mankind. 
Confucius was the teacher of his people nearly 
twenty-five hundred years ago. Socrates, the 
soldier, senator, philosopher, was greatest as a 
teacher, and now, after the lapse of twenty-three 
centuries, is best known in that relation. Few 
men of England — that land of statesmen, phi- 
losophers, warriors, poets, and painters — have 
exerted so wide an influence upon the future of 
their country and their race as Thomas Arnold, 
the head master of the school at Rugby. Half a 
century ago, Samuel H. Taylor, Principal of 
Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., was invited to 
become President of his Alma Mater, Dartmouth 
College. His reply was, in the words of Nehe- 
miah, the Jew : " I am doing a great work, so 
that I cannot come down." He felt that the 
moulding of the characters of some hundreds of 
young men, changing their bent and inducing 
many of them to go forward in the great work of 
obtaining a college education, was of far greater 

29 



importance than the management of a college 
and the guiding of such young men as had al- 
ready passed the crucial point of decision and 
had entered upon the pursuit of the higher 
education. 

I confess that it has often seemed to me that 
the greatest work a teacher can do is to influence 
his pupils to strive to obtain a liberal education. 
As I look back upon more than half a century of 
busy, educational work, I remember nothing 
which gives me more satisfaction than the recol- 
lection that by personal influence I have turned 
this and that young man from a shorter course of 
secondary education to a full college line of study. 
This may seem somewhat more unusual when I 
say that for more than half of that period my 
own work was on the English High School side, 
while my associate, Mr. Goff, was the principal 
of the Classical Department, and his special work 
was to prepare young men for college. 

I have always enjoyed teaching the English 
language and literature. I have never wearied 
of the mathematics, the natural sciences, history, 
civil government, or the metaphysics ; but I have 
always advised the ancient languages and a full 
college course, not merely to prepare for one of 

30 



the so-called professions, but for the higher walks 
of business life. 

Mr. Goff, in memory of whose great work in 
life we are assembled here to-day, early chose as 
his special and particular department the teach- 
ing of Latin and Greek. In that I beUeve he 
was wise. 

Dr. Wayland, in an address to teachers, nearly 
three-quarters of a century ago, used the follow- 
ing language : — 

" Gentlemen, you have chosen a noble profes- 
sion. What though it do not confer upon us 
wealth ? It confers upon us a higher boon, the 
privilege of being useful. What though it leads 
not to the falsely named heights of political 
eminence ? It leads us to what is far better, the 
sources of real power ; for it renders intellectual 
ability necessary to success. I do verily believe 
that nothing so cultivates the powers of a man's 
own mind as thorough, generous, liberal, and 
indefatigable teaching. But our profession has 
rewards, rich rewards, peculiar to itself. What 
can be more delightful to a philanthropic mind 
than to behold intellectual power increase a hun- 
dred-fold by our exertions, talent developed by 
our assiduity, passions eradicated by our counsel, 

31 



and a multitude of men pouring abroad over 
society the lustre of a virtuous example, and be- 
coming meet to be inheritors with the saints in 
light — and all in consequence of the direction 
which we have given them in youth ? I ask 
again, What profession has any higher re- 
wards? " 

This prosaic age, so devoted to science and to 
money-getting, may not fully appreciate such lofty 
sentiments as these from the pen of Dr. Way- 
land, but they are true and will stand the test of 
the ages. 

Hon. Emery Washburn, a distinguished lawyer, 
jurist, and governor of Massachusetts, once said : 
'' Whoever has been within the walls of a school- 
room must have observed how much the character 
of every scholar, for the time being, seems to 
borrow its form and hue from him who presides 
there . . . even in the very manner of thinking 
and feeling. . . . Who has forgotten or can 
ever forget the look, the manner, the tone, the 
oracular response, the unbounded learning, and 
the infallible wisdom of the master who urged 
our lagging steps along the early stages of the 
uphill and tangled path of learning? And who, 
to the latest hour of life, can root out of his 

32 



mind impressions that he there received ? . . . 
How shall we measure the influence of the 
schoolmaster upon the social and political condi- 
tion of his country ? Her future men of influence, 
who are to lead in the management of her affairs, 
and to leave the impress of their own character 
upon everything around them, are placed under 
his control at that susceptible period of life when 
the deepest impressions are the most easily re- 
ceived, and which, when once received, can 
never be wholly effaced. . . . And if the teacher 
could gather around him from their various 
walks and employments the men of influence 
whose intellectual powers were developed by his 
efforts, how justly could he, like the Roman 
mother of old, point to them as the priceless 
jewels with which he had enriched his country." 

What but the school and the college has made 
America what she is to-day among the nations of 
the world ? She has again and again succeeded 
where other nations would have failed. 

A hundred years ago our young republic ex- 
tended westward from the Atlantic only to the 
Mississippi River. The total population was 
then about 5,000,000. Its people now number 
75,000,000. Its area was then not far from 

33 



8oo,ooo square miles. It is now 3,800,000 square 
miles. This expansion of territory and increase 
of population have brought upon the country 
great responsibilities and gigantic difficulties. 
Yet the intelligence of the people has been so 
general that we have battled successfully with 
every difficulty, and the development in indus- 
tries and inventions has been so great that the 
actual increase in wealth is without precedent in 
the history of the world. 

May it not be confidently asserted, without 
fear of contradiction, that these great results 
have been produced more by the aid of the 
school and the college — in other words, by the 
teacher — than by all other causes combined ? 
Moreover, has not the highest culture — that is, 
classical study — done the most to bring about 
this marvellous result? 

Mr. Goff was a model teacher in many re- 
spects. He had a deep and abiding interest in 
the struggles of young men for an education. He 
was a pattern of propriety and dignity. His 
manliness was apparent to all. His daily walk 
showed himself to be a Christian gentleman. His 
reliability, his exact and thorough scholarship, 
and his teaching power only became known by 

34 



long-continued acquaintance and personal con- 
tact. He was always and everywhere devoted to 
the best interests of his school, its pupils and 
its teachers. He had a strong distaste, almost 
abhorrence, for anything superficial, and that 
which partook of the nature of showy parades. 
But he studied the wants of the times and was 
fully abreast of the day in all things pertaining 
both to the subject-matter of instruction and the 
best methods of teaching. He was never a pes- 
simist — but always hopeful and progressive. 
With him everything new must be first examined, 
and only that which proved itself right and true 
and needful was to be adopted and introduced. 
No experiments were ever tried in this school. 
Anything new must have passed the experimental 
stage before it could be approved, and when once 
put in operation there would then be no neces- 
sity to abandon it. New principles of pedagogy, 
new methods of teaching, new devices, must be 
studied and weighed before they ever had a trial 
here. But when once shown to be improvements, 
whether in subject-matter or methods of study 
and teaching, they were at once approved, intro- 
duced, and defended. 

May I mention, as illustrations, two or three 

35 



things introduced here, in advance of most if not 
all schools of the time. 

When the school moved into this building, so 
admirably adapted for the purpose, most prepara- 
tory schools had a three years' course in Latin 
and Greek. Some of the best of them had added 
a fourth year. This school had had a four years' 
course for some years before that. But in 1876 
Mr. Goff introduced a new course of study, 
which proposed a seven years' course in Latin. 
Young lads of ten years of age began the Latin 
and pursued it in connection with the arithmetic, 
geography, and other so-called grammar-school 
studies. This course has proved eminently suc- 
cessful, and the example has of late been followed 
here and there by our best schools. 

Almost a quarter of a century ago, when the 
school came to occupy this building, Mr. Goff, 
with his associates, paid great attention to the 
health of the pupils, and in particular to their 
eyesight. They believed the rooms were so 
lighted that the eyesight would not be injured 
by study in them. The services of a distin- 
guished oculist were secured, who examined the 
eyes of all the pupils in the school and made a 
permanent record of their condition. Two years 

36 



later he made a second examination, and after 
another two years a third. The result showed 
conclusively that, in general, the eyesight of 
these pupils had improved, and even in cases of 
myopia, where the difficulty usually increases at 
the age of these children, the increase had been 
less than the average. Although the practice had 
already begun in some countries in Europe, this 
is believed to have been one of the first cases in 
this country of careful and systematic medical 
examination of pupils' eyes in school. 

New methods, even new principles, are con- 
stantly presented, especially to the teacher of the 
ancient languages. No age is exempt from them. 
With some, anything new is at once believed to 
be true, and everything true is supposed to be 
new. With others, nothing new is true and noth- 
ing true is new. This seems to belong to no one 
period in particular, but to every age. 

Nearly seventy years ago. Professor Cornelius 
C. Felton, afterward President of Harvard Col- 
lege, wrote as follows : — 

" I am no advocate for the old scholastic sys- 
tems of teaching. I have no wish to see young 
scholars forced to spend tedious days and months 
and years in conning page after page of barba- 

37 



rous Latinity before they understand the meaning 
of a single word. But I do believe, and I think 
my opinion is borne out by literary history, that 
the old-fashioned systems, bad, absurd, oppres- 
sive, as many of them were, produced better 
scholars, riper intellects, cooler heads, than any 
of the labor-saving machines which have in such 
multitudes been the playthings of this self-in- 
dulging age. I doubt not they have apparently 
promoted the rapid and easy attainment of learn- 
ing, but, if they have been successful in the final 
issue, it has been only through the skill of the 
teacher and the genius of the learner, which 
gained the object in spite of them." 

Mr. Goff would never decry the accurate clas- 
sical scholarship of the fathers at a time '• when 
men could talk Greek," as Cotton Mather says, 
"by the hour, and write Hebrew as fast as their 
mother tongue ; " nor, on the other hand, would 
he undervalue the modern methods, especially 
that principle of pedagogy which proposed to put 
every new thing learned into practice as soon as 
possible. His method of teaching was ever fresh, 
ever new, ever interesting. Yet he was always 
conservative. He believed in the solid, substantial 
things of education, and the results of this method 

38 



of teaching are abundantly seen in the active 
lives of the graduates of the school over which 
for so many years he presided with such wisdom 
and success. 

Two or three years ago I had occasion to look 
over the curreht catalogite of Brown University. 
I could not fail to notice the names of seven or 
eight members of the faculty who were graduates 
of this school, where they had been under the 
tuition of Mr. Goff. What significance is there 
in that one simple fact ? When a college vale- 
dictorian settles down in the university town to 
spend his whole life in preparing young men for 
college, and in his own lifetime sees his former 
pupils filling successfully chairs in that university 
in such numbers as would in our great Western 
country make a whole college faculty, surely he 
may be congratulated upon the success of his work. 

Sometime since I collated the list of graduates 
of this school to see into what professions and 
kinds of business they had gone. The five 
hundred (in round numbers) who have graduated 
were occupying positions in literally all parts of 
the country and even of the world, and their 
various vocations, being classified, were embraced 
under more than fifty different kinds of business. 

39 



Among them were engineers, — civil, electrical, 
and mechanical, — architects, editors and pub- 
lishers, railway and insurance men, pharmacists, 
chemists, and druggists ; and it was especially 
observable that there were eleven clergymen, 
twelve teachers, twelve college professors, thir- 
teen engaged in banking business, twenty-six 
lawyers, twenty-eight physicians, forty in various 
positions in mercantile life, and nearly sixty 
manufacturers of jewelry, cotton and woolen, and 
other kinds of goods. 

Such a record as this speaks volumes for the 
character of the school and for the greatness of 
the work of its late senior principal. 

The life-work of Mr. Goff is ended. No one 
can correctly estimate its value in this city, this 
State, the nation, or the world. Its worth in 
money, in influence, in intellectual activity, in 
moral force, borders upon the infinite. 

What does such a life, such a work of forty 
full years, — nearly the whole of it in this city, — 
demand from the citizens of this large and beau- 
tiful city ? This municipality has greatly im- 
proved within the last thirty-five years. To-day 
many of the leading members of the city council, 
the school board, the State Legislature, and other 
40 



state and municipal officers are graduates of this 
school, and while members of it were under the 
instruction of him whom we honor here to-day. 

Surely the teacher who has laid down his work, 
who has died with his harness on, who has now 
gone beyond the recognition by those who re- 
main, — surely his memory deserves well from 
his late fellow citizens ; and does not the institu- 
tion which he has been so largely instrumental 
in building up deserve high recognition for im- 
portant service faithfully and successfully per- 
formed ? 

The graduates of this institution will never fail 
to be loyal to its welfare, and I am sure will al- 
ways hold in grateful estimation the high services 
done for the cause of sound learning by its late 
senior principal. Dr. Charles B. Goff. 

The choice motto upon the seal of the school, 
Deo DoctrincBque (" For God and Sound Learn- 
ing"), was of his own choosing. It voices the 
guiding aim and purpose of his life. 

The next speaker was Albert Harkness, Ph.D., 
LL.D., of Brown University : — 

One feeling pervades all our hearts as we 

41 



gather here to-day. I read it in the countenances 
of these bereaved pupils and of these sympathiz- 
ing friends. We meet under the shadow of a 
great affliction. One of the founders of this 
school, one who has put his very life into it, 
alike his hand, his head, and his heart, one who 
has so often been cheered and gladdened in his 
arduous task by its growing usefulness and influ- 
ence, now rests from his labors. A beloved and 
venerated teacher, in the fulness of his useful- 
ness, with all his stores of learning and of ripe 
experience, has departed, never again to gladden 
us by his genial countenance. Even if our lips 
were silent, our hearts would pay a grateful 
tribute to his memory. 

But in the years that are past the name of 
Dr. Goff has been wont to awaken in our hearts 
only emotions of gladness. So let it be here to- 
day ; so he would have it. Dismissing, therefore, 
as far as we may, all thought of our own loss, we 
do well, it seems to me, to think and to speak 
more especially of the joy and the blessing which 
he has brought into all our lives, and into the 
lives of hundreds of his pupils scattered over the 
land, filling positions of trust and influence, 
stronger and better and happier to-day because 

42 



of the inspiring influences which they carried 
with them into Ufe from that well-remembered 
class-room. It has been the unspeakable happi- 
ness of many of us to have known Dr. Goff inti- 
mately for many years. The memory of his 
words and deeds and of his spotless life will go 
with us as long as we live. He has left us, but 
his influence remains with us as an abiding 
blessing. 

My first acquaintance with Dr. Goff was in his 
senior year, in 1855. I was then just entering 
upon my work at Brown University, and he was 
the first senior to put down his name for my 
class in Elective Greek. He at once exhibited 
unmistakable characteristics of the true scholar, — 
a zeal that never flagged and an ideal that could 
be satisfied with nothing short of the highest 
possible excellence. His ready perception of 
truth, whether in science or in letters, his remark- 
able memory, and his unusual facility of acquisi- 
tion enabled him to attain that finished scholar- 
ship which almost from the outset made him 
facile priiueps in his class and ultimately secured 
to him the highest honors at graduation. 

But the early promise of college days is some- 
times but imperfectly fulfilled in subsequent life. 

43 



Not so with Dr. Goff. With him commencement 
marked not the end of his educational career, 
but only a single stage in its course. The high 
academic rank attained at graduation was only 
an omen of the scholarly life which characterized 
all his subsequent years. With him life itself 
was a season of education, of scholarly attain- 
ments, and of intellectual growth. Year by year, 
by patient study and thought, he continued to 
add to his garnered treasures of knowledge. 

During his senior year the grave question of 
the choice of a profession became the subject of 
serious deliberation and of long and earnest 
thought. From the first he seems to have been 
drawn to the special work to which he subse- 
quently devoted all his powers with such eminent 
success. Some of his classmates and friends, 
indeed, questioned the wisdom of his choice, and 
argued that only the law opened suitable avenues 
to public recognition and honor for gifted and 
ambitious young men ; but in his judgment the 
profession which had been honored by such 
names as Arnold at Rugby and Wayland at 
Brown offered a field of usefulness, influence, 
and even of honor, which ought to satisfy any 
man's ambition. 

44 



From the hour when I first met Mr. Goff as a 
student in my lecture-room till the day of his 
death I have watched his career of usefulness 
and honor with ever-increasing interest, first as 
the head of the Preparatory Department of 
Union College, later as the principal of the High 
School at Fall River, and finally as one of the 
founders of this institution, where the great work 
of his life has been done. The story is a very 
simple one, that of a life devoted to duty, but it 
means more for the welfare of this community, 
city, and State than many another life that is 
loaded with honors. In public stations brilliant 
success attracts immediate attention ; the achieve- 
ments of the statesman and the orator receive 
prompt recognition ; indeed, on any public arena 
glory at once crowns the victor. Contrast with 
this the work and reward of the teacher. In the 
quiet of the class-room, far removed from the 
public gaze, he is slowly but surely building 
character, developing and training the God-given 
powers of the human soul, storing the mind with 
useful knowledge, introducing it to garnered 
treasures of literature, to the best thought of the 
great thinkers of the world, teaching it to explore 
the secrets of nature and to look through nature 

45 



up to nature's God. Now in all this there may 
be little to elicit the loud plaudits of the multi- 
tude, but it furnishes the substantial foundation 
on which our government rests — the foundation 
for all our most cherished institutions, civil and 
religious. The statesman makes the laws, but 
the teacher makes the statesman. From the 
class-room of our departed friend have gone 
forth men who have occupied important positions 
in all the varied walks of life, at the bar, in the 
pulpit, on the bench, and in the halls of legisla- 
tion. Into all these important positions they 
have carried, consciously or unconsciously, the in- 
fluence of their teacher. They are living wit- 
nesses of the priceless value of his life's work ; 
through them he speaks to-day. Could we gather 
up all the influences for good which successive 
classes for a whole generation have been carrying 
forth from that quiet class-room, — in trained intel- 
lect, in stored minds, in refined tastes, in sympa- 
thetic hearts, and in substantial character, — who 
in view of such results would dare say that the 
teacher's life and vocation do not offer scope for 
the best powers of mind and heart, and that they 
do not ultimately have ample reward, if not in 
public recognition, at least in the inner conscious- 
ness of the soul ? 
46 



\ 



For upwards of forty years Dr. Goff has sus- 
tained a very intimate relationship to Brown 
University, a relationship fraught with blessings 
to both parties. Himself the product of its best 
culture, he was ever a true and loyal son, ever 
ready to acknowledge his indebtedness to his 
loved Alma Mater, and ever ready to serve her in 
word or deed as occasion offered. It would be 
difficult to exaggerate the value of his services in 
this regard. As a teacher, as a member of her 
corporation and of the Library Committee, he 
labored with untiring zeal to promote her pros- 
perity and success. 

Dr. Goff was eminently fitted, both by natural 
endowment and by careful study and training, 
for the high and responsible duties of the teacher. 
With quick and generous sympathies that brought 
him into close contact with all the members of 
his classes, he entered readily and heartily into 
all their youthful feelings, appreciated their diffi- 
culties, and gladly furnished them the needed 
encouragement and help. With a kind word of 
admonition for the wayward and indolent, he 
was ever ready to recognize and reward not only 
marked success, but all honest effort. 

Fidelity to duty was his chosen motto ; his de- 

47 



votion to his school was well-nigh sublime ; no 
sacrifice of time or labor was deemed too great 
if it could add to his professional success. For 
the good of his school he was ever ready " to 
scorn delights and live laborious days." 

Dr. Goff was a master workman in his chosen 
field of labor. Wisely conservative, he was yet 
in the best sense truly progressive. Never seek- 
ing change for its own sake, he yet recognized 
the fact that the world moves and that he who 
remains stationary in any of the important posi- 
tions in life will soon find himself left behind. 
Ever ready to prove all things, he was yet deter- 
mined to hold fast that which is good. 

But in speaking of a life like that of Dr. Goff 
we do well to remember that it is often the man, 
even more than the teacher, that moulds char- 
acter. The very presence of a true man of high 
culture, of refined taste, and of a pure and spot- 
less life is itself a liberal education. Example is 
often more potent than precept : — 

Longum iter est per prcecepta^ breve per exempla. 

The Quartette then sang "A Hymn of the 
Home Land," by Haweis. 



48 



The following tribute was then given by Rev. 
William H. Lyon, of Brookline, Mass., a former 
pupil of Dr. Goff in the Fall River High 
School : — 

I entered the Fall River High School in the 
fall of i860, and finished my teaching at the 
Mowry and Goff English and Classical School in 
Providence in June, 1870. Since then I have 
seen Mr. Goff only occasionally. I count him 
one of the strongest and finest forces of my life. 
During the four years of my High-School course 
he was not only my instructor, but my ideal. I 
count myself extremely fortunate to have been 
under his influence at that plastic and formative 
period of my character. 

He was then in the early prime of life, not far 
from twenty-five. He was slight, fair-haired, 
scholarly in appearance, gentle and courteous in 
his bearing, scrupulous and neat in his dress, 
and gave the impression of what is described in 
the rather trite phrase of " a gentleman and a 
scholar." I can think of no better influence to 
fall upon a boy who is looking forward to a 
scholarly career. 

49 



He was not a prig, however. He could not 
have been beloved of boys, as he was, if he had 
been. He had a good laugh, a capacity for such 
jokes as it were wise to indulge in among one's 
pupils, and left always the impression that in 
college and among his fellows he must have been 
capable of having a very good time. That idea 
did not interfere with his popularity among us. 
He had a good voice and was told by a well- 
known teacher of music, Mr. Parker Borden, 
that he could sing. He was rather incredulous 
as to this, but applied himself so vigorously to 
practice that he soon developed a fine high tenor 
quality of voice. He became the first tenor of a 
male quartette, of which Mr. Borden was the 
second, and I the second bass. We went about 
among the surrounding towns singing on various 
public occasions. On these excursions Mr. Goff 
was one of the most delightful of companions. 
He let his boyish spirits loose, yet kept the re- 
spect of his pupil ; and when he appeared at his 
desk the next morning was again the master, 
more beloved but not less obeyed. 

He had a very high ideal of his office in its 
moral as well as intellectual side. His whole 
scheme of discipline was built on a high level. 

SO 



The older classes were placed on their honor in 
many things. We went freely into the library to 
study together, and in summer we were often 
allowed to go out into the yard and upon the 
terraces in front of the old schoolhouse. Our 
ideas of honor were a little lax, and we did many 
things which we should not have done if the 
eyes of the master had been upon us. But, on 
the whole, the trust that was reposed in us did us 
good, and it seems to me now to have been a very 
wise scheme sensibly carried out. I am inclined 
to think that it was quite as much love for the 
master as a sentiment of honor that kept us from 
utterly disregarding the rules; but that love was 
so strong and had so great an element of respect 
that it was a very potent influence on the side of 
good conduct.' 

To this scholarly, courteous, and unobtrusively 
moral character, Mr. Goff added a very deep and 
sincere religious nature. Those who were in the 
High School during the early part of my course 
must remember well the revival which swept 
through the town and gathered in nearly every 
member of the school. There was the usual large 
element of mere contagion and imitation, but 
there was also substantial and permanent good. 

51 



Mr. Goff was one of those who became interested 
in religion at that time, and henceforth it was a 
power in his life. I remember well the morning 
on which he rose for the usual brief devotions, 
and, with a broken voice, confessed his sorrow 
that he had not cared much for such things be- 
fore and that he had perhaps neglected his duty 
as to leading the young under his charge in the 
right way. The devotional exercises after that 
had an accession of fervor, and, though naturally 
they could not remain at the height of emotion 
which belonged to an exceptional period, yet they 
were always after that more warm and loving 
than most such regular exercises are apt to be. 

It was in the year of our graduation, 1864, that 
Mr. Goff came to Providence. It was a good 
time to leave his school in Fall Ri\^er, for it was 
in the best of order. He had sent off the largest 
class of boys in its history to college, and they 
won the largest number of prizes for many years 
before or since. I saw little of him during my 
college course, but knew that his school pros- 
pered and saw that his boys took more than their 
share of prizes on entering college. Six months 
after graduation, I was delighted to receive an 
invitation from Mowry and Goff to become Mr. 

52 



Goif's assistant in the Classical Department. To 
have only the classics to teach, to have no dis- 
cipline to administer, and, above all, to be asso- 
ciated with my old master, made the year and a 
half which followed one of the happiest periods 
of my life. I found Mr. Goff the same gentle, 
gentlemanly, thorough, high-minded man he had 
been in Fall River. The boys were of the best 
to be found in the city or its suburbs. We were 
all warmly attached to our principal, and I am 
sure that, though many years have passed over 
us since that time and many experiences have 
overlaid its events, there is not one of us who did 
not have, when we heard of his death, something 
of the same feeling that Tom Brown had when 
he heard at his fishing that his old master, Arnold 
of Rugby, was gone. Across the years we look 
back to a man who in his school relations had a 
most unusual power of winning the love of his 
pupils and getting out of them all that was possi- 
ble of work for love's sake. I am not competent 
to judge of his pedagogical methods. The science 
of pedagogy has almost sprung up since our day. 
But if faith that worketh by love is the highest 
Christian virtue, the power of inspiring young 
men to do their best by love is one of the finest 
of human capacities. ^, 



As I look about this room and see the photo- 
graphs of the various classes, I am impressed 
anew with the breadth as well as the depth of 
the teacher's influence ; for every one of this 
multitude of boys has become a centre from 
which the influence he has received from his 
master is going out upon all sides into the world. 
So let us think of him whom we commemorate 
to-day as not dead, but as still radiating out over 
the world the refinement and the loveliness of his 
character. 

^uffttgtttfi ^. f^illtv 

The closing address w^as made by Augustus S. 
Miller, A.M., of the class of 1867 : — 

I have been asked to say a few words here to- 
day for the alumni of this school, to speak for 
them their appreciation of their former teacher 
and always friend. Dr. Goff. 

I entered this school at the same time that 
Mr. Goff became connected with it, in the autumn 
of 1864, and I was a member of the first class to 
take the complete course in the Classical Depart- 
ment under him, in preparation for college, gradu- 
ating from the school in 1867. 

I remember distinctly my first impressions of 

54 



Mr. Goff when I went to see him about entering 
the school. I recall the genial way in which he 
greeted me, and I know that I thought then that 
I should enjoy being his pupil. 

As was his manner on that day, so was it the 
last time I saw him, not long before his death, 
and my first impressions of him were never* 
changed. 

In a school so large as this, with the number 
of teachers there are here, it would be strange if 
the boys should not form different estimates of 
their several instructors, and if, when leaving the 
school, some should not carry away with them 
more pleasant memories of this teacher, others of 
that teacher ; and it is, I think, a very remarkable 
fact that of all the alumni of this school, those 
who have graduated from here for more than 
thirty years past, not one, so far as I can learn, 
was ever heard to speak otherwise than in the 
highest terms of Mr. Goff. 

The alumni all had great love for him, for they 
felt that he was their friend as much after gradua- 
tion as before, always interested in their lives 
and their work. At every meeting of the Alumni 
Association we wanted a word from him. He was 
a modest man, not given to much talking, but 

55 



when he acceded to our request for a speech it 
was always worth one's while to listen to his few 
words. 

Perhaps I cannot express better how the alumni 
regarded him than by saying that as the years 
went by, as we grew to be boys no longer but 
*«men, acquainted with the ways of the world and 
with men, he never grew less in our estimation of 
him. 

The shattering of youthful ideals is one of the 
painful things which come to us with age and 
worldly experience, — to find that the idol which, 
with boyish ardor, we raised on lofty pedestal 
was really fashioned from the poorest clay ; that 
the man whom as boys we deemed almost a god 
was at best a most ordinary mortal. 

Our appreciation of Mr. Goff never changed. 
As boys we regarded him as a great teacher, and 
respected and admired him as a man, and in 
after-years, our school days long past, we sent 
our sons to him because he was a great teacher, 
and because, as ever, we respected and admired 
him. 

In these days of educational rush, when 
quantity, not quality, seems to be the desideratum 
of the many who uphold popular education as the 

56 



panacea for all our ills, political and social, and 
when from our schools continually come forth in 
great numbers those who have acquired some 
education, too often fragmentary, and too often 
an education disserved from culture, it is a pleas- 
ure to take a look backward, to recall this gentle- 
man teacher, who by his own good breeding and 
polite bearing exerted a refining influence upon 
all the youth who came under his care, impressing 
upon them that not alone their aim should be 
high and accurate scholarship, but that gentle- 
manly conduct was also desirable. 

As the resolutions of the alumni, presented 
here to-day, have so well said, " He impressed 
upon his pupils the beauty and dignity of true 
culture." 

I was affected forcibly by the closing words of 
the last speaker, when, looking about these walls 
upon the pictured faces of all the graduates who 
have gone out from this school, he spoke of the 
influence of this great teacher whose labors here 
are ended. 

This city, this State, this country, can estimate 
never too highly the influence exerted by such an 
instructor of youth as was he who has gone from 
us ; it is an influence for good in this world which 
must live forever. _^ 



(Qxtvatt$ from Setter^ 

NEARLY a year ago Mr. Rice published a 
beautiful edition of the " Service in Re- 
membrance of Charles Bradford Goff," and 
kindly sent a copy to every graduate of the 
school. He received hundreds of letters from 
them in reply. Mr. Rice has kindly permitted 
extracts to be made from these letters, and these 
extracts which follow emphasize the strong affec- 
tion and high regard which all his pupils enter- 
tained for the character and worth of Dr. Goff. 
Selections will be made from only a few of these 
letters. 

A practising physician writes : " I regret sin- 
cerely my inability to be present at the service 
in memory of the best friend any schoolboy ever 
had. Professional duties alone prevented my be- 
ing present. Mr. Goff was more to me than a 
teacher, more like a kind and thoughtful friend, 
always careful in criticism and still more thought- 

58 



ful in commendation. My two years in the school 
were to me the happiest in my life." 

A strong business man in the Rocky Mountain 
region of the great West writes : " Mr. Goff was 
always to my mind a model teacher, and I look 
back upon my connection with his school and 
the advantages enjoyed there with a great deal 
of pleasure. I hear from time to time with great 
interest, to me, that you are prosecuting the work 
with which you have been so long connected 
with the same zeal and along the same lines 
which originally gave the school its prominent 
place as an educational institution, and I wish 
you continued prosperity and success." 

Another business man from a neighboring 
State writes : " Very soon after entering college 
I began to realize my good fortune in having 
acquired my preparation under the direction of 
Mr. Goff. Years and experience of men have 
added to my appreciation of his many excellent 
qualities as a man and a teacher, and the re- 
markably thorough training in classics which I 
received at his hands is continually and increas- 
ingly proving its inestimable value to me. It 
seems to me that the teaching of Mr. Goff had 

59 



results which are enduring to a remarkable de- 
gree. With sincere regard and best wishes for 
the future of the school and all connected with 
it, I remain, Yours very truly." 

Another says : " No words of mine can add or 
detract from the reputation which Mr. Goff has 
left behind. His pupils are a living monument 
to his worth as a teacher. As time passes the 
feeling grows upon me that the years which I 
spent under his tuition were the most profitable 
of my school days." 

From one of our colleges : " I cannot express 
the sadness which I felt when informed of the 
death of Mr. Goff. It was as the loss of a dear 
friend. The pamphlet will be kept in grateful 
remembrance of the dead. Mr. Goff was always 
a gentleman as well as a scholar; a friend in 
need, a genial, kind-hearted man, who left his 
influence upon his scholars. I think I owe my 
decision to take a college course as much to him 
as to any one man. He was always speaking of 
the superior advantages of a college man, whether 
in business or the professions. I shall always 
hold him in grateful remembrance." 

A business man in Providence : " My memory 
60 



of Mr. Goff is more of a personal friend than of 
a teacher. ... I felt his kindly familiar interest 
in me even after leaving the school, as long as 
his earthly life continued. ... I think of him as 
a benefactor to me beyond any other earthly 
friend." 

Another says : " I heartily indorse everything 
that has been said concerning the ability and 
upright character of our beloved teacher. Truly 
he was a Christian gentleman in the broadest 
sense, and the world would be much better if 
there were more men of his integrity and sterling 
character in it." 

From North Carolina : ** I wish to acknowledge 
the receipt of the pamphlet issued in remem- 
brance of my highly esteemed teacher and friend, 
Charles Bradford Goff. His influence and train- 
ing I shall hold dear throughout life, and I feel 
that in his death I have indeed lost a dear 
friend." 

A Providence man writes : " It was not my 
good fortune to be under the instruction of Mr. 
Goff while at the school, but it was my good for- 
tune to be in his Bible class at church, and I 
shall always look back at it with a great deal of 

6i 



satisfaction ; and I always felt and remarked that 
while all the teachers of the old school had their 
admirers, Mr. Goff was loved and respected by 
all the boys. We have all lost a true friend." 

A successful business man writes : " The ap- 
preciative words which were spoken during the 
memorial service a year ago and recorded in this 
book are singularly heartfelt and well deserved. 
I shall preserve the work with pleasure, and only 
wish my own tribute of love and respect could be 
added to the worthier ones set down there." 

From New York City : " I have read the 
pamphlet with great interest and no little feeling. 
Mr. Goff's personal influence was remarkably 
intense, and his individuality impressed itself 
strongly upon at least one boy I know who was 
not very susceptible to good influence of any 
sort." 

From a New York lawyer : " I value much the 
copy of * Service in Remembrance of Charles 
Bradford Goff,' which you so thoughtfully sent 
me. I have read with pleasure the splendid trib- 
utes paid to Mr. Goff in this service. He was 
worthy of them all. He was an ideal teacher, 
scholarly, kind, sympathetic, and helpful. He 

62 



was a lovable man. I shall not forget the genial 
way in which he greeted me when I became his 
pupil years ago. All his pupils admired and 
respected him as a teacher and had an abiding 
affection for him as a friend. The days I spent 
with him as one of his scholars I count among 
the happiest of my life. He will be gratefully 
remembered as a teacher and friend by all those 
who had the happy privilege of being his pupils." 

Another from Providence : " Too much could 
not be said of the affectionate regard in which 
the memory of Mr. Goff is held by all who knew 
him. Every boy of his class respected and loved 
Mr. Goff both as a man and as a teacher. His 
kindly nature will never be forgotten. I think 
he held the same position in the regard of his 
scholars as was held by Professor Lincoln with 
his pupils." 

From Northern California : " I was not di- 
rectly brought under the instruction of Mr. Goff 
while attending your school, yet my recollections 
of him are of the most pleasant character. From 
one of my intimate friends in the school I learned 
many instances of Mr. Goff's ways and methods 
in the schoolroom and of the high esteem in 

63 



which he was held by those who had been under 
his influence. Only this summer I met a pupil 
of his who was in the school a short time only, 
but who spoke of the pleasure he had in meeting 
Mr. Goff a few years ago. Some of the pleas- 
antest memories of my life are connected with 
the hours spent in the old schoolroom — now, as 
then, under your watchful eye. I can assure you 
that none of those who have listened to your 
earnest voice in explanation of the questions 
brought up in recitation feel more gratitude than 
I do." 

The following from the British Provinces : " I 
have read with more than usual interest the ac- 
count of the service held at the school in his 
memory. Mr. Goff as a teacher made an impres- 
sion on me different from any other teacher ex- 
cepting Professor Lincoln, and I have always 
considered myself most fortunate in having been 
under his instruction. He was not only our 
teacher, but our friend and our companion, who 
had our highest respect and love." 

The following is from a college professor in 
Ohio : " The little memorial pamphlet of Mr. Goff 
came a few days ago. I was very glad to re- 

64 



ceive it, and thank you for sending it to me. I 
think that you know of my great admiration and 
affection for Mr. Goff. I am very thankful, as I 
think of him, to remember that I took particular 
pains every summer that I saw him for a number 
of years back to tell him how much I owe to 
him and how grateful I was for it. He did more 
for me than any other teacher that I ever had, 
and there is seldom a week passes now that I do 
not think of him as I do my work in my recita- 
tion-room. I would have been glad to have been 
present at the service had it been possible. As 
long as I teach Greek I shall remember him with 
grateful pleasure and mention him frequently." 

A Rhode Island business man : " Aside from 
the impression which he made on me in a serious 
way, I shall always remember the twinkle in his 
eye when either he or one of the boys (as we 
sometimes did) made a little joke. His freedom 
from the stereotyped schoolmaster's manner was 
also a thing that always appealed to me, and I 
always think of him as a scholar and a gentle- 
man." 

Another writes : "As a student in the old 
' Mowry and Goff ' school, I was never under 

65 



Mr. Goff 's instruction, as you probably know, and 
in fact, I was not well acquainted with him. But 
it would have been impossible to come in contact 
with him almost every day and not form an esti- 
mate of the man. It may probably be said that 
the judgment of young fellows of sixteen or 
eighteen would not be worth much, but after all 
I am inclined to think that teachers are * sized 
up ' by their students with a good deal of accuracy 
in the long run. I always had a deep respect for 
Mr. Goff. He impressed me as being a gentle- 
man in the highest and broadest sense of the 
term ; a man who influenced the students not so 
much through fear as by the power of his own 
example, and their desire to emulate a man whom 
they so thoroughly liked and respected." 

From Brooklyn, N. Y. : " Very many thanks 
for the pamphlet received last week. Sorrow for 
the loss of Mr. Goff and the deep appreciation of 
his sterling qualities are therein expressed far 
better than it would be possible for me to do. 
As I grow older I realize more and more how 
great was my good fortune in being one of his 
pupils, and I recall the many happy hours spent 
in his class-room as the most pleasant and profit- 
66 



able of my life. One of the most valuable lessons 
learned from him, and one that has been of great 
value to me in my teaching here at the medical 
college, is that the way to impart knowledge is by 
leading, not driving, the student. Surely in his 
passing from us we have sustained a great loss, 
and in our sorrow we can but feel that with such 
true and noble spirits as his the whole mass of 
mankind is leavened." 

From a well-known clergyman : "I received 
and have read with pleasure and grief the beau- 
tiful memorial of my beloved teacher, Mr. Goff . 
Please accept my deepest gratitude therefor. My 
recollections of Mr. Goff are of the pleasantest 
kind. He was easily my greatest teacher up to 
the time I came under his instruction. His high 
ideal of a scholar which he held up before his 
pupils was very stimulating. Nothing but exact 
work would pass muster with him. His English 
style was, to my thought, the acme of perfection. 
His rendering of Vergil was from time to time 
surprisingly beautiful, and one of the greatest 
happinesses of my life was the reading of the 
^neid under his instruction. I believe that if 
Mr. Goff had given his attention to literature he 

67 



would have made his mark therein. I used to 
look forward to his week in chapel, and his con- 
duct of that beautiful service was always a great 
delight to me. His departure is to me the loss of 
a very dear friend." 

From Editorial Rooms, Boston : " I thank you 
for sending me the pamphlet descriptive of the 
service in memory of Mr. Goff . I am glad to read 
it and to recall my pleasant recollections of the 
days when I sat at his feet. His death must be 
a great loss to you. I can well understand what 
his companionship must have meant to you and 
how you must miss it." 

From a college professor in Maine : " It is 
most fitting and touching throughout, and I am 
very grateful for it. Mr. Goff contributed to my 
life one of its strongest formative influences. He 
held up and exemplified high ideals, both in 
study and in character, and I recall now exer- 
cises in Latin composition when his genial hearty 
nature, without the least apparent effort, lighted 
up the task with real merriment, yet without loss 
of scholarly exactness or intellectual or moral 
earnestness. He always seemed simple, natural, 
direct, and cheery. How brightly his face would 
68 



light up with smiles ! Yet I think one could well 
call him a quiet man, whose influence was effect- 
ive more through what he was than what he said. 
His life is an inspiration to us all who try to 
walk in the teacher's holy calling." 

A Rhode Island man says : " I was not able to 
be present on that occasion and I read the pam- 
phlet with the greatest interest. It will be twenty 
years in June since I left Mowry and Goif's 
school, but the remembrance of Mr. Goff's kind 
treatment and careful instruction is as fresh now 
as then, and I trust it will always remain with 
me." 

From Minnesota : " Please accept my thanks 
for the pamphlet, memorial of Mr. Goff, which I 
have read with much satisfaction. The remarks 
therein beautifully express what I think every 
pupil of his has felt. His influence did much to 
form what high ideals of life we each possess, 
and I look back with the pleasantest memories 
to the three years' school life under him. Such 
a teacher, unassuming, able, inspiring, leaves a 
rich bequest when called hence after forty years' 
professional work." 

A college professor in the West writes : "Any- 

69 



thing that has to do with my old master is always 
filled with pleasant recollections and even sweet 
memories. He was a man in ten thousand." 

From a gentleman in Pawtucket : '' I beg leave 
to acknowledge the receipt of the pamphlet in 
memory of my former esteemed teacher and 
friend, Charles Bradford Goff. As the years have 
gone by since my departure from the school and 
from among you, many pleasant reminiscences 
have been brought to mind of recollections and 
conversations with Mr. Goff and with others who 
then composed the corps of instructors. Though 
I have not had the pleasure of meeting my old 
friends and instructors of the E. and C. school 
for several years, yet I vividly recall their faces 
and am always glad to hear from the good work 
of the school." 

From an undergraduate in college : " I shall 
always think of Mr. Goff as one who has done 
more for me than any other man I know. And if 
there ever was a person who set us young fellows 
the example of what a true man ought to be, he 
certainly was the man. His was a life that needed 
no written memorial to endear him to the hearts 
of his pupils, but the memory of such a service 
70 



as the one held in the old chapel last year is, it 
seems to me, most fitting, and will serve to re- 
mind us often of the man who had an ideal and 
lived up to it." 

From a Boston business man : " Accept my 
thanks for your kindness in remembering me with 
a copy of the service held in memory of my 
teacher Dr. Goff. Among the many true and 
good things said of him were some that brought 
to mind the great good his work in the English 
and Classical School really accomplished. His 
teaching and influence will go through life with 
many of us, and his example cannot but be pro- 
ductive of an effort, at least, on the part of all of 
us to make ourselves more useful and better 
men." 

Another from New York : " I cannot express 
to you the emotion I had in reading what the 
speakers had to say in eulogy of this man's life 
and character. . . . Mr. Goff had a great influ- 
ence over me during those four years at the 
school, and I shall never cease to revere his 
memory for what he did for me in the way of 
example and teaching." 

From New York City : " I was much pleased 

71 



to receive the pamphlet, ' Service in Remembrance 
of Charles Bradford Goff,' which I read with 
deep interest. I can heartily indorse the senti- 
ments expressed therein, and consider myself 
very fortunate in having had such a noble man 
as one of my teachers." 

From a Chicago lawyer ; " I beg to acknowl- 
edge the receipt of the tasteful memorial to the 
late Mr. Goff. I can cordially say ' Amen ' to 
all that is there so well said. The influence of 
his personality and example have made a lasting 
impression upon my life. I have never had a 
teacher whose memory-picture is so clear and 
distinct in my mind to-day as his." 



72 



PRINTED AT THE EVERETT PRESS 
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 



r 



